“Every CEO that’s participating is ready to a) listen and b) step up,” said an industry executive familiar with plans for the meeting. “Everybody’s goal is to come out of the meeting with actionable, constructive and measurable things that the industry can do to spur recovery.”

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Obama will take a measured tone with the bankers, telling them he wants to have a candid and constructive conversation and doesn’t want to vilify anyone, according to administration officials. But the president will tell the banks that they have a special responsibility to help spur recovery because of the extraordinary bailout assistance they received last year.

The president will acknowledge the industry concern that regulators are overcorrecting and have become overzealous. And he’ll call for a dialogue about the issue.

Still, Obama wants the CEOs to send a signal to loan officers that they’ll not be rewarded for turning down loans. The president will say that lending is critical to the recovery and that he hears story after story about creditworthy borrowers who haven’t missed a payment but have been cut off.

Lucas van Praag, a Goldman Sachs managing director who is the firm’s global head of corporate communications, said: “Coming into this meeting, we are focused on helping our clients to protect and grow their businesses. Clients are at the heart of our business. And whether it is helping a client restructure debt, raise equity [or] make a strategic acquisition, helping a U.S. aircraft manufacturer to finance the export of American-made planes or underwriting Build America bonds so that municipalities can build schools, roads and hospitals, meeting clients’ needs is the role we play in bringing a broad-based economic recovery closer for all Americans.”

The meeting comes as public anger about the Wall Street bailout — and the federal deficit spending necessary to finance it — is becoming a major political challenge for the Obama administration. At a time when unemployment is at 10 percent, the administration has expressed frustration that the big banks have been slow to lend to the small businesses that can generate job growth.

Major Wall Street players say they are caught between the urging of the White House to lend and the equally forceful guidance from federal regulators not to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers. It was willy-nilly lending to unqualified subprime mortgage customers, after all, that triggered the global economic meltdown. The bankers say they’ve learned their lesson and are trying to avoid a repeat of that fiasco.

Obama has suggested in public comments that the pendulum has swung too far, hurting small firms that can’t get credit to finance growth.

The bankers — including the heads of Goldman Sachs, American Express, JPMorgan, Capital One, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — will not present a specific industry plan. Instead, they’ll talk about their own organizations’ plans, especially to help small businesses, a key White House focus.

The industry executive said that ideas that come out of this meeting could include more lending for small business and an extension of Treasury’s Build America bonds program, a stimulus measure that was designed to lower borrowing costs for state and local governments in getting infrastructure projects moving.

“There’s a very strong understanding that we have to work constructively on financial regulatory reform that will provide markets with certainty,” the executive said. “The industry is perceived as recalcitrant because it has raised issues with particular details of reform. However, as a general matter, all of the firms at the table recognize that reforms are necessary to prevent future crises, reestablish confidence in the system and provide certainty. Markets crave certainty.”

Rob Nichols, president and COO of the Financial Services Forum, said: “We are in agreement with the administration that we need reform and modernization of the U.S financial supervisory framework. We are committed to the important task of creating an efficient and flexible 21st century regulatory architecture that ensures the safety and soundness of financial institutions, and protects the interests of investors, depositors, and customers. A safe, sound, and efficient financial sector is critical to the health of the U.S. economy, our recovery prospects, and job creation.”